


365

by HerbertBest



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Anniversary, Anniversary Fails, Breakfast, Crying During Sex, Curtain Fic, Emotional Sex, Eventual Smut, Humor, Kid Fic, Married Life, Multi, Romance, Slice of Life, Songwriting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-07 14:50:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13437117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerbertBest/pseuds/HerbertBest
Summary: Dan and Holly's first anniversary as a married couple rolls around, but carving out alone time proves to be a difficult task.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheseusInTheMaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/gifts).



> Another part of the [Plausible Deniability](http://archiveofourown.org/series/845157) Universe! And thank you to SweetieFiend for the title!

They woke up late for once, an alarming fact that would have Dan fearing for his daughter’s life, if the first sound he heard wasn’t Ross complaining about how heavy Wren was getting.

“You can’t pull off my arm!” he was saying. “Daddy earns money with that arm! He’s gonna have to draw with his nose.” Wren was shrieking with laughter. Ross trailed off when Dan pulled down the blanket, inadvertently waking up Holly, who made a surprised noise beside him. “Was I loud?” he asked.

“Nope,” he said. “Does she need changing?”

“No, and I got her dinner on the stove,” he said. Wren was nearly a year old and was mostly on solids, and had a penchant for oatmeal none of her parents could explain. Dan asked no questions; anything that made his daughter happy was good enough. As if conjuring the thought, Wren was reaching for Dan, her feet clonking into Ross’ ribcage.

“Abba, kiss baby!!” she demanded. 

“Kiss baby?” he said, feigning confusion as his arms were filled with the weight of his dynamic daughter. She proceeded to dot his face with kisses, and smack him in the jaw with her little fist by mistake. “MWAHA!” he replied, kissing the top of her head until she shrieked and yanked his own growing hair with her hands.

Holly promptly sat up, looking dazed in her teeshirt and boy shorts, drawing Wren’s attention. “MAMAMA!” Wren yelled in Dan’s ear, and tried to loop Holly into the hug.

“Oof, don’t pull off my head, birdie,” Holly lightly scolded. 

“Sorry!” said Wren. This was the latest of the twenty words she could thus far speak and string together like a pro. Brian told Dan that any day now his daughter would suddenly start picking up words by the dozen to dizzy them all, and Dan was both excited for and nervously dreading that time. She could otherwise toddle and climb and play with great joie de vivre. She seemed to be limitless. 

“It’s OK,” Holly said brightly. “Let’s go down to breakfast; abba can feed you while mama feeds the birdies and cats.”

“YAY!” yelled Wren, who reached up for a by-now half-dressed Ross. Ross picked her up and whisked her back into the nursery to dress for the day.

Alone again, Dan kissed Holly’s stale, chapped early-morning mouth and then smiled into her chin. It was time to get up and make a day of it. “Happy anniversary,” he said.

“Happy anniversary,” she echoed.

There would be time for them later.

 

**

 

Wren finished off a big bowl of oatmeal and some applesauce, along with carrot sticks and a cup of breast milk before she clapped her hands against the top of her high chair. “All done!” she declared.

“You sure are,” Dan said, mopping her face with a paper towel and handing the dishes off to Ross. Holly was eating at the table behind them, and once Ross took Wren into the garden it’d be Dan’s turn. 

“Abba, wanna go Bri!” 

“We’ll see, honey.” Dan had to meet him at the studio by noon, but it was likely that Wren wanted to play with Coco. Brian’s daughter was bad at sharing her dog, but she made exceptions for Wren.

Ross plucked her out of her high chair and carried her to the back door. “Wanna come look at the birds while I get in some sketches?” he asked Wren, who shrieked happily. Dan pecked Ross on the lips and kissed his daughter one more time before getting the breakfast dishes into the sink.

He heard Holly rattling pans behind him as he washed and dried Wren’s bowls, then wiped down the high chair. By the time he’d washed his hands Holly was singing to herself. 

He turned and saw a plate of beautiful pancakes dotted with whipped cream and fresh blackberries sitting at his place.

Dan let out a moan; his knees buckled. “Happy anniversary!” she sang, and kissed the corner of his mouth as he sat down to feast.

“Thank you so much,” he sighed, sitting down, grabbing a fork and tucking in. “Tonight,” he said, “we’re going to fucking rock it, baby.”

“I’d settle for rolling it,” she said.

He laughed at her corny joke, kissed her lips and rested his free, clean hand on her knee. All he had to do was take care of Brian and Arin, and the rest of the day would belong to them.


	2. Chapter 2

The day wasn’t going well, to put it mildly. He and Brian were knee to knee in the studio, trying to work out the rhyme pattern for the latest song. 

Dan squinted at his phone, the final drafting point before they usually hit the recording booth. “’Baby,’” he sang, “I don’t know how to cram this kiddie seat into a four-door fuckmobile!”

“Baby seat?” Brian suggested. His fingers were padding up and down the length of his keyboard. 

Ninja Sex Party’s subject matter had changed rapidly since his marriage and ascent into parenthood. Writing about trying to be hot and middle-aged was fun, a hot middle-aged parent in love with your spouse harder. People kept assuming his songs were about his variety pack of a sex life and Dan wasn’t entirely sure if he was comfortable with that.

But Dan couldn’t lie. Some of them were inspired by Arin, Ross or Holly (OK, ninety percent of them were probably Holly-centric if he was being honest), some came out of the past, and sometimes Brian would look at him and say “why don’t we write a song about fucking the alphabet?” 

“Baby seat,” Dan agreed. Brian tapped a couple of keys and he adjusted his lyrics. If he was lucky he’d be done for lunch and they wouldn’t have to rework Brian’s scratch track too severely. 

“Drive My Love Inside Ya” would probably be a workable song by then.

*** 

“Kree doesn’t rhyme with shiny,” said Brian two hours later, his head flat against the back of the couch. Dan moaned and erased another line. The lyrics were a little better now but Dan’s patience was long gone.

“Brian, I need food. I’m going to die if I don’t get food,” he said.

“Then we’ll take a break. Do you want me to order some sushi?” he asked.

“Actually, I’m meeting Holly at a pub downtown,” Dan said. 

“Ah yes, the anniversary,” said Brian. “I’d forgotten.” He sounded mildly surprised.

Dan felt a little guilty as he remembered the old Dan, the one who would stay in the studio until they had a workable song together, the guy who sat up all night writing lyrics if a release date was looming. Now he scribbled down lyrics with Wren in his lap, chewing on his wrist, distracting him by feeding him bits of her own dinner, or while she was sitting in the tub taking a bath. “I’m sorry, man. It’s almost noon and I said I’d be there.”

“Why be sorry? I’m gonna go home and have lunch with my own hot wife,” Brian said.

“You mean you’re not going to Grumpspace to bird dog on Arin?”

“Bird dog? Oh Danny…” His ears turned a shade redder than normal, but otherwise Brian’s expression was unchanged.

“Don’t talk down to me,” Dan said cheerfully, grabbing his phone and heading for the door. “I’ll be back, but if you’re not here I’ll see you later on, man. Gotta go with Arin at four!”

Brian waved him away and Dan switched modes, turning back into a husband, slipping out of his rock star skin and back into his real one.

It was weird to think of it that way but suddenly very true. He wasn’t just living to be ‘Danny Sexbang’ anymore. He was an abba, and a husband, and a lover.

Settled, but not.

***

The barroom was old and dark, much cooler than the superheated air outside; it was surprisingly family friendly for a taproom, a restaurant with a surprising number of teenagers sipping mocktails and grazing on mounds of French fries. Dan immediately shivered and pulled his white leather jacket back on. He found his daughter by the squealing sound she made while stuffing pretzel rods into her mouth.

“There’s my baby,” he said, but he kissed Holly first. She looked good with her glasses on and in a big, wine-colored formless off-the shoulder sweater and black tights, and tasted of the beer she’d just sipped. She kissed him back gently, and then he kissed Wren and sat down.

“How’s the album going.”

“It’s going,” Dan observed. “We’re stuck on something but we’ll figure it out.” He watched Wren finish her pretzel sticks. “Did you order?”

“For me and Wren. I didn’t know what you were feeling like.”

Dan flagged down a waitress, then ordered a chicken sandwich and a bunch of fries and a big glass of water, which came first and drew Wren’s amazed gaze. “Tell me how your day’s been?” he asked, watching Wren tip back her sippy cup.

“I finished those props for Nate,” she said. “Plopped them in the mail and did a little more work on my streaming area. I scored some more freelance work,” she said. “Gonna pack some Etsy orders when I get home, so I’ll be all free for tonight.”

Dan grinned. “You and me, alone at last…”

She kissed the corner of his mouth and nuzzled his cheek. “A big empty house…or something else, maybe?” she raised an eyebrow at his smile. 

“I’m not gonna tell,” Dan said. He was thinking about the gift he’d bought her, which was all set to be delivered sometime in the afternoon. A personalized photo album, to hold pictures of them specifically, since she had one for her marriage with Ross and one with a lot of pictures of the three of them , and another for the reams of phone snaps he’d made of Wren.

He’d also bought her a silky black tunic – witchlike and floaty, wearable as a dress or for something far more intimate. 

His thoughts were disturbed by the arrival of his chicken.

He watched Holly over the table; their feet brushed beneath it, and sometimes his fingertips tickled hers when he reached for his napkin. She kept smiling back at him. Their attention was occasionally divided by their daughter’s questions or demands, but deep down they were still the same couple of nerds who’d spilled a milkshake during a weird non-date years ago.

He actually giggled to himself when Wren reached into the bucket of fries and took a handful without asking. Her red-brown hair glimmered in the light, tightly coiled, as he resituated her in her booster seat to the sound of Holly’s scolding.

“I remember when someone I used to share a cubicle with at Polaris had hair that color.” Holly’s hair was currently a purple-blue that reminded Dan of blackberry jam.

“She has your hair,” Holly flushed. “And even if I had hair that color –it hasn’t looked like that for years.”

Dan bent over the table, pecked Holly’s lips. “It’s still that color where it counts,” he whispered.

“So nice of you to remember what color my armpit hair is, Dan,” she said lightly. He had the grace to blush a little as she stopped Wren from dumping the last of her milk on the floor.

**** 

Brian had fixed the lyrics by the time Dan came back. He sat down and listened to the scratch track over again and smiled. 

Picking up a bass propped nearby in a stand, he plucked down a few notes. He wouldn’t need much more to create a song that would make Holly happy. The words floated into his head without being bidden.

*** 

The song was finished and recorded and placed on his phone by the time he came back to Grump Space. This session was easy – they played Snoopy’s Sports Spectacular and sucked at it horrifically. Arin’s yells reverberated through the room, and Dan laughed so hard he lost himself in a coughing fit.

It was like every other Grump session, only Arin’s head was nestled in Dan’s lap for most of the recording time. 

They finished, and Dan kissed Arin goodbye before doing some voice overs for Matt and Ryan. He left at three thirty sharp, checked his phone and saw a flood of texts from Holly.

 _The restaurant I booked for tonight burned down. Check the news. We’re fine but I’m stumped for food. Going to buy a roast and make a cake._ was the unified message.

 _Whatever you think is cool, I’ll do it,_ he texted back.

It took him twenty minutes to get home, and by the time he pulled into the driveway there was a package lying in the driveway. One that had been backed over and torn open at least once.

“ROSS!” he shouted into the ether. Scooping the box up, he got rid of the ruined exterior only to find the album had been ripped right in half by someone’s back tire, the cover hanging by one hinge. Worse, there was no sign of the dress at all. Panicked, he raced his way into the house, hiding his book down the front of his jacket. “I’m home,” Dan yelled into the kitchen, running up the side stairs to the bedroom.

He heard Wren and Holly yell something back, followed by the sound of something alarming popping and booming in the kitchen. Dan heard Holly groan at herself and Wren’s laugher, and knew they were both safe.

He shut himself up in the room with a bottle of glue, with too much work to do.

****

It was a disaster. 

Hours later Dan was left with a glue-spattered album and no hope of returning it to get a replacement. He felt like a total moron. Less like one when Holly burst into the room covered with flour, trailing Ross and Wren.

They couldn’t look at one another. Dan slumped with shame over the album and Holly turned from him.

“Will you guys please just talk?” Ross asked. He rolled his eyes when neither of them moved. “I’m going to take the baby into the bathroom and change her. Talk. Now.”

They started talking before he even closed the door.

“I ruined your gift…”

“I blew up dinner! I never blow up dinner!”

Then, simultaneously, “what’s wrong with me?!”

“You’re both trying too hard,” Ross yelled from the bathroom.

“Yeah!” Wren chimed in.

Dan finally took in Holly’s messy, stained form. He bit his bottom lip. “Yeah. I wanted today to be perfect for you.”

“I wanted it to be perfect for you,” she said. “And I thought it was going to be….”

“I just feel like a huge failure sometimes,” Dan admitted. “Unworthy.”

“So do I! But oh, Dan! I’d love you if you had no hair and couldn’t sing. If you had cancer or lost your memory or anything, anything at all. You’d still be you, Dan, and I’d still love you.”

How could he reply to that? Holly was never nakedly emotional that way, the same way Dan himself was, and hearing her say the words kind of killed him. Dan’s face crumpled, and his shoulders started shaking.

“Oh Sweetie,” she said. He felt her wiping away his tears as he gasped and tried to reclaim control of his emotions.

“You knew I was an emotional disaster when you married me!” Dan said between gasps. She was wiping his nose and his tears and it was nice, intimate. 

“Is Dan crying again?” Ross asked from the bathroom.

“Shut the fuck up,” Dan said without malice. When he emerged with a freshly-changed Wren Dan ruffled Ross’s hair and kissed the crown of his head before picking up and holding his baby.

Soon Ross took her back. “You two get to geek out,” Ross said. “Me and the baby have a date with the art museum. Then we’re gonna have dinner and go all the way to Morgan’s to sleep.”

“I have a feeling you won’t be sleeping,” Holly said. She was using her birb voice, and Dan had to cross his legs.

“I’m bringing the baby,” Ross pointed out, kissing Holly’s mouth and then finding the baby’s bag on the floor by the door. 

Holly shrugged as Ross retreated. In the living room, she and Dan fussed over Wren until he told them it was close to six.

They waved the two of them goodbye, but soon found themselves standing in the silence of the room together.

All alone at last.

*** 

They took an obscenely long, hot bath, and then changed into clean clothing. They ordered take-out pizza and lit candles, then devoured dinner snuggled up on the couch. 

After cleaning away the leavings Holly shyly handed Dan a looseleaf binder. “I was going to give you this for Hanukah,” she said, “but I finished it the other day. I think it makes a nice anniversary present.”

Dan took the binder and flipped it over between his hands. He realized quickly, leafing through the book with gentle reverence, what it was – she’d designed new D&D characters for them to campaign with. He could see himself in the naive, sweet bard Cassius and Holly in the tough but giving swamp witch Morganna. The land from which they’d sprung was dissimilar but they shared similar ground in a magical garden. 

“I can’t wait to play this with you,” he said, kissing her cheek. Panic flashed through him – he didn’t have anything to give her in return, he thought to himself –but remembered his song. “Um…my thing for you is super new. So I don’t know if it’s going to be perfect.”

“I don’t need you to be perfect,” Holly said.

He smiled nervously. “Let me get my bass,” he said, and kissed her forehead.

Returning a moment later with his Fender, he plugged it into a tiny portable amp, plucked and tuned. “You’re the first person who’s gonna hear this,” he said. “I guess that makes sense.” Holly sat up and crossed her legs, watching him with anticipation in her eyes. 

The song bloomed out of his mind, poured from his lungs, an aural bouquet of roses. A thank you card. A love letter. A badge of fealty. 

When it was over, Holly lurched from the couch, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him silent.

 

*** 

He was inside of her, two steps from the bed, braced against the dresser drawer, which was hell on his shaking knees and back. Dan had felt impatient, emotionally overblown, wanting to make sure she understood what she meant to him – how deep his longing for her ran.

She was soft and wet from when he’d tested her with his tongue downstairs, hastily pulling her dress up and her underwear down, pressing her hips back against the plaster wall, and Holly forgot she was allowed to be loud, that no one else was in the house, not even a curious, raunchy-minded Ross. He made her squirt down the neck of his dress shirt, over his face, into his hair, until she pulled herself away with a sob.

Holly was rougher with him than she usually was. She squeezed at his cock, played with his balls, choked hard when she shoved him against a doorframe and blew him for two hot, unendurable minutes.

They were weeping openly, a single unit of flesh, when he pressed his mouth to hers and rolled her onto the bed. There wasn’t time to look, to savor, in the moment. Later, he promised himself, later, and came inside of her in one long moment, with one long cry, arching his throat in supplication to her.

“I love you,” she mumbled, sweating for both of them, her legs still tight and high around his wriggling hips.

“Oh I love you,” he said, “I love you so much, I love you endlessly too.” She kissed away a drizzling tear. “Stay with me always, Holly. Never leave me!”

“I won’t,” she said, and didn’t shame him for the strength of his feelings. 

The world slipped between his fingers, blue and grey, as the last of his passion poured into her. And she held him even then.


End file.
